OF PEACHES and a change of date

Dear friends, these are hard days for a lightoholic like me - even though it's gloriously hot outside, I sense the dimming that's around the corner.  At the Riverdale Farmer's Market today, there were almost no peaches - we have moved on to apples and pears.  I'm not ready to say goodbye to peaches!  

Oh well, apples are good too.  But the end of this flood of light - that's the hard part.  Not to mention watching the garden shrivel, bit by bit.  I want to be out there all the time, drinking it in, light and colour and scent, because in a few months ...  

Mon dieu, enough of this mournful talk.  I have made a terrible mistake in the scheduling of my next Write in the Garden workshop.  It was the same day - Sunday September 28th -  as Word on the Street, one of my favourite events in the Toronto calendar, and I hope yours too, Toronto-ites.  An entire day dedicated to celebrating writing and publishing, when Queen's Park is taken over with talks, readings, tons of books and magazines for sale in great special deals, and small stalls where you can actually talk to publishers, editors, and writers.  

I don't want to deprive my students - or myself either - of this uniquely literary event, so I am changing the workshop date to Sunday October 5.  I'll personally contact those of you who have registered; this is for any of you thinking about it.  I say, come to Word on the Street and be inspired, and then come to my workshop and feel the joy of pen on paper. 

I went this morning to the warehouse where the Toronto police are storing all the recently-found stolen bicycles. There are thousands, arranged by alphabetical order, so I looked, not for my lovely Bluebird that wouldn't be there yet, but for the three other bicycles that have been stolen in the last ten years - the Sekine I bought in Vancouver in 1975, and the two Raleighs, gifts from my dear friends Ben and Sarah after my first bike was stolen.  They had stopped riding theirs, so I rode Ben's until it was stolen from this house while it was under renovation after the fire, and then Sarah's until it was stolen, ironically, from outside Ben and Sarah's house while I was visiting them.  But those fine old machines weren't there.  

What was really disgusting in the warehouse were all the children's bikes - stacks of them. People who steal a child's bike are in the same category - schmucks - as people who don't pick up after their dogs in parks where children play.    

Okay, I've stopped ranting for today.  Now I suggest you go and eat the last local peaches. Drink in these last days of summer.   And unroll the bottoms of your trousers, while you're at it.

of bicycles and Obama

More gifts.  My beloved bicycle Bluebird (named after the bluebird of happiness, because that's what she was to me) was stolen on Wednesday - the bike mentioned in my Star article. She was locked with a heavy U lock, but not in the right place - whoever it was managed to cut the post not the lock, and probably lifted her up over the post and carried her off, still locked.  This was at 4.15 p.m. in the middle of Gerrard Street.  I was in the Doubletake second hand store buying a pair of $6 jeans; I came out and just stood there, looking in incomprehension at the empty space where my bike should have been.  

I had sent her registration number to the police, who were kind and helpful.  You never know, they said, it might turn up.  Sometime this weekend I'm going to go down to the warehouse where police are keeping the thousands of recovered stolen bikes - maybe I can find the three that were taken over the last ten years. 

So where's the gift?  I told my dear friend Norrey, a lifelong bicycle rider, about the theft.  22 year ago, we bought this house from Norrey and her then-husband, and she comes by regularly to visit and to see how it looks these days.  Our children are the same age, so we have lots of stories to tell.  Yesterday when I got home, there was a message from Norrey - she had left something on the deck, a bit beat up, she said, but it'll do for now.  Somehow she had brought her former bike over from the other side of town, where she lives now.  It will more than do for now - it will remind me of her generosity and thoughtfulness whenever I ride it.

And speaking of generosity and thoughtfulness - I watched Obama speak at the Democratic convention last night, and all I can say is, the Republicans must be shaking in their stilettos and Gucci loafers.   He's a bloody miracle.  I can hardly bear to listen - it's like a dream, hearing someone say these things out loud after the monstrous nightmare of the last years, the loathsome silver-spoon-sucking fratboy idiot Bush.  How can Obama fulfill this idealistic mandate in a country drowning in problems?  How can such a sane and sensible man be so keen to try? 

reading 1963

A great gift arrived in the mail today - my own self, on paper, from forty-five years ago.   The English friend I have not yet met, Penny the sister of my childhood pen pal Barbara, found a packet of my letters to Barbara starting in February 1963 when I was twelve, and ending with Barbara's death in 1966.  Barbara put them into a brown envelope before she and her mother flew from London to the Mayo Clinic in May of 1966, for the heart operation from which she never recovered.  She was sixteen. 

Today I received that brown envelope, with Barbara's writing on the front: "BETH'S Letters To Me."  Just looking at it made me burst into tears.

Luckily, the letters themselves made me laugh.  Barbara had lots of pets, and I wrote back, "We have only two animals - a 9 month old dachshund, and my younger brother Michael." 

On June 8th, 1963 - I was twelve, she was thirteen - I discussed our exchange of girls' magazines: I sent her "Calling All Girls" and she sent me "Princess." I had also sent her a map of the imaginary island a friend and I had invented, where we lived as orphans, and Barbara replied with a description of her own fantasy.  I wrote back:

"I think your dream world sounds lovely.  Is the house positively riddled with secret tunnels? I am glad your parents escaped the executioner and that you have a maid to wash the dishes."

And then: "Have I ever told you about the time I won a Junior Encyclopedia Brittanica? [my spelling at the time] It started this way, at lunchtime:

Mum: Oh, look Beth.  It says if you write about your favourite book, you can win a Junior Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Beth: crunch, munch, crunch, chew, cough, slurp

Mum: Beth!  Listen, it says ... (repeat)

Beth: Oh (munch) very nice (munch munch slurp)

Mum: (excited): Oh Beth.  You could win.  DOOOOOOO enter.

Beth: (Munch) Well, (crunch crunch) O.K. (chew)

Mum: Oh good.  I'll get pen and paper.

Beth: (reflectively) Hmmm.  (slurp)  What is my (munch crunch) favourite book?

Mum: You liked "A Little Princess."

Beth: (smacking lips) Ah, delicious.  Oh yes, by Francis Hogson Burnett.

Mum: (patiently) Yes dear, except it's Hodgeson, to rhyme with Podgeson, you know.

Beth: Oh ... (thinking)  Oh.  (scribble scribble) Oh dear!  Does this ketchup blob look too terrible?  I like this book ... ( mumble mumble) Mother!  (vehemently)  I can't write with you snorting down my back.

Mum: Beth.  Don't be rude!

Beth: Because she is genuine and (mumble mumble) There.  I'm through.  It took me five minutes and if I don't hurry, I'll be late.  Bye!

And I won.  Isn't it amazing?"

Amazing.  That is exactly how it happened; I remember that lunchtime well, though I was eating a poached egg which doesn't involve much crunching.  But there are so many other things I don't remember, which I can bring to life again through these letters.  Now I have the entire correspondence - hers to me and mine to her.  And also, more than forty years later, emails between Penny and me, as we become friends long distance, just as her sister and I did.  

How rich is life.

Munch, crunch, slurp.

INFORMATION ON CLASSES

I've just heard from Ryerson that my class there is nearly full already, with two weeks to go before it starts.  So strange - sometimes we don't know until the last minute if the class will be a go or not.  If you would like to take a class with me and can't get into Ryerson, I will also be teaching at the U of T - a course called Autobiography that starts on Monday Sept. 22.  It's in the afternoon, though - from 1 to 3.30 for 10 weeks.

And if you can't make that, there will be another Write in the Garden workshop on Sunday Sept. 28 from 9.30 to 5, and on Sunday October 26.  I'm also available, though it's more costly, to work one on one as an editor and coach.  And the whole thing starts again next term, in January, the night course at Ryerson and the day course at U of T.  

I look forward to meeting you.

Workshop number two

Just got a note from a student who was at the Garden Workshop yesterday: 

"The day was magical for me and your garden a mystical treat.  I was still high on creativity when I arrived home.  I enjoyed the company of the other writers ...  You have such a capacity for encouraging your students and inspiring us to excellence in our craft."  Many thanks.  

This time, while Wayson was away, the superb novelist Alissa York, my colleague at U of T, was our guest artist.  She told us that when she has figured out her story, she puts scenes on file cards, so when she goes to tackle the day's work, she can just pull one file card and work on that scene.   She also has all her research cross-indexed so isn't overwhelmed by the struggle to find research or the scope of her project.  I told her that if I'd met her as I was working on my book, it might only have taken me ten years instead of 25 to finish.  (Every time I sat down to work, I felt I was nearly drowning in the size of the project; it never occurred to me to divide it methodically into small chunks, and as for my research - it was a miracle I found anything at all.)

Alissa told us that our creative mind is bigger than our brain - it's huge, encompassing much more than ourselves.  A wonderful way to think about what we do and the giant self we do it in.

It was a beautiful day for the workshop.  Even the burst of rain midway through added to the adventure - we slung a tarp over the pergola on the deck and stayed right where we were.  I was exhausted by the end, as I think we all were; all I did in the evening was sit watching the closing of the Olympics.  I had the feeling the Chinese didn't want it to end; the entertainment went on and on.  If only, if only, if only, all that good will, the friendships of those beautiful healthy young people of all sizes, shapes and colours, could be transferred to politicians and governments.  If only the Olympics weren't a bubble of peaceful international connection in a world of war.